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How to reach greater productivity by addressing in-building network challenges

This blog post originally appeared on the TeleTalk blog on ETTelecom.com.

The phenomenon of BYOD (Bring your own device) is spreading rapidly in enterprises. As India’s workforce becomes increasingly young and mobile, the use of smart devices like smartphones and tablets alongside work gadgets is now a norm in most offices.

Last year alone, smartphone sales grew almost three-fold to over 44 million, and with the surge of smart devices, it’s no surprise that up to 57 percent of Indian enterprises are already planning to invest in BYOD and mobile technologies.

However, this growth presents its own set of challenges. For instance, there is a visible gap between the prevalence of mobile device usage within buildings and adequate indoor mobile coverage or capacity.According to the CommScope Global Enterprise Survey 2013, 43 percent of all phone calls originating
within an enterprise facility involve a mobile phone, however only 30 percent
of these businesses say their carrier provided in-building signal coverage that
is adequate to handle the mobile traffic. Importantly almost three quarters of
the respondents admitted that employees had to roam around within the office or
go outdoors for strong enough signal to make a call.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that most enterprises operate out of
large buildings and campuses. The large architectural designs and layouts tend
to impact wireless connectivity indoors, often leading to weak or blocked
signal areas and dead zones where there is no connectivity. With productivity
at stake, enterprises are increasingly paying attention to the network coverage
within their facilities.

There are a number of solutions that can be deployed to improve connectivity.
When traditional macro cell sites and towers are unable to reach all corners of
a building, deploying a portfolio of small cells (remember: a small cell is
defined as any RF solution that is crafted to augment capacity or coverage to
the macro cell) for large buildings and femto or pico cells for smaller office
buildings yields immediate coverage benefits.

Small cell solutions can manage high-density traffic while offloading up to 100
percent of the traffic from the surrounding macro cells.

Some operators are also using cell sculpting or addition of new sectors with
focused coverage (using sector splitting, high gain or high vertical beam width
antennas) to throw stronger indoor signals from the outside on selected zones
and buildings.

On the other hand, using fiber-optic, high-power DAS is ideal for large
structures like shopping centers or high-rise buildings where precise coverage
is crucial. Many enterprises are even thinking of owning and deploying active DAS solutions themselves instead of relying on operators investments to
support the needs to their staff working in the premises.

As mobile devices gain greater importance and see increased usage in the
workplace, it is essential that building owners look closely at indoor network
coverage quality during construction as opposed to following the traditional
retroactive approach that is the cause of the number of dead zones seen in
buildings today.

The aim should be to develop a living intelligent building from the ground up,
which inherently supports critical building services such as cellular coverage,
video and data and automation systems. The key is to incorporate high
performance infrastructure into the building network during the design phase
itself and provide ubiquitous cellular coverage through distributed antenna
system (DAS) deployment and remote powering requirements. As a consequence,
building owners and enterprises can overcome challenges of poor network
coverage and enable greater productivity for the always-connected workforce.

About the Author

Pankaj Gandhi

Pankaj Gandhi is the director of wireless sales for India & SAARC at CommScope. As the business head of India, Gandhi is responsible for leading all customer facing sales activities in the India sub-region for the CommScope wireless group. A veteran in the telecom industry, Gandhi has about 20 years of industry experience and relationships with key telecom players in the Indian subcontinent. Prior to joining CommScope, Gandhi was head of customer marketing at Nokia Siemens Networks in India. He started an Indian sales office for Airwide Solutions and was head of wholesale business for South Asia at BT (British Telecom). Pankaj also worked for Siemens Communications for 12 years. Gandhi has a bachelor of engineering degree in electronics and communication from Delhi Institute of Technology, Delhi University. He is a silver medalist in executive masters in international trade of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi.